Comedy That Doesn't Stand Up

Just watched a tape of Ricky Gervais' most recent stand-up show, 'Politics', that was shown on Channel 4 this week.
Some of it was moderately funny but some of it made me very uneasy. There's a long tradition of taboo-breaking comedy but saying that people in wheelchairs are 'lazy bastards' and 'never off their arse' is just lazy comedy. I don't somehow think those remarks would have earned him a place with Dorothy Parker and chums at the Algonquin Round Table.

One or two of his jokes about 'little people in wheelchairs' were reasonably funny as well as deliberately shocking. But I don't know how funny I'd have found them if I were a paraplegic.
I do know how unfunny I found his stuff on gay people.
I don't know whether his West End audience realised it, but his piece about the equalisation of the age of consent was almost indistinguishable from the rantings of the late Baroness Young in the House of Lords and ran through every inaccurate gay stereotype in the book without even much attempt to turn them into actual gags.
The assertion that 'millions of people' had marched in favour of a lower age of consent did produce a hollow laugh....... I wish.
He was equally adrift from the facts when he said that no 16 year olds were involved in the protests since two of them took the Government to the European Court of Human Rights. But if he wants to know why not too many gay 16 year olds would want to parade themselves in front of TV cameras he should look at what's going on in our schools at the moment.

He also had a lot of infantile fun with a leaflet from the eighties promoting safe sex among gay men. Again, soft target, easy material. Any sexual activity is ludicrous out of context.
But how typical, I thought, of a heterosexual male to make fun of any non-penetrative sexual activity. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am is the McDonalds of sexuality and it might even the score if one of our gay comedians was given 90 minutes on Channel 4 to explore the limited erotic horizons of poor, white, heterosexual trash from Reading.

If I'd paid £25 for Gervais' show I'd have been less than pleased to hear him recount an urban myth that's been around since the early Neolithic period - the one about the boy masturbating on his bed who opens his eyes to find his mother has put a cup of tea on the bedside table. Several people in pubs have told me this story, pretending it happened to them, in the past 40 years but they weren't rich and fashionable comedians just sad bastards who I avoided in the future.

For 'bad taste' comedy to be acceptable (still shocking but not offensive) there are two different conditions or justifications.
The first is that the remarks are made 'in character' - i.e. a fictional character of established bigotry and stupidity like Alf Garnett or Gervais' own David Brent.
We have to assume that Gervais was not doing his stand-up act as David Brent if only because he spent some time complaining about the public confusing him with his character and shouting 'Brent' at him. Rather ungenerous of him considering it's made him a wealthy man.

The second and alternative condition is when jokes about minority groups are made by members of that minority themselves.
The oldest example of that genre is Jewish humour but in recent years there's been a proliferation of comedians who are gay or Muslim or with various disabilities. At their best, these people can make an audience laugh at absurd preconceptions and stereotypes whilst simultaneously demonstrating how ridiculous they are.

Gervais, not belonging to any minority other than rich and moderately talented white comedians from provincial towns, can only say 'I'm going to say things so shocking in their tastelesness that despite the absence of any real wit, you will laugh to cover your shock or embarrassment. This is my unique comedy selling point and if you don't like it, fuck off.'
But, intentionally or not, he's also saying that it's OK to laugh at people with disabilities or gay people or anyone else who is different, although he seems to steer clear of any racial material.

None of which would matter too much if gay children or autistic children weren't being beaten up in our schools. Taking playground abuse and putting it on the stage, television and DVD as cutting edge comedy, raw and unmodified by context or character, can produce an easy laugh in the theatre or living room but also a punch in the face in the street or playground.

Although comedy with social reponsibilities would mean the death of comedy and I would never want comedy to be censored, comedy doesn't exist in some compartmentalised vacuum, particularly today with television, video and DVD in homes and in children's bedrooms. Comedians still have an individual responsiblilty and, I would hope, a conscience and a capacity for self-censorship.

And there's also a strange inconsistency here. Comedies like Mind Your Language or Curry and Chips could never be shown on television today, nor could the Black and White Minstrel Show, so beloved of my parents' generation. And hell will freeze over before British television executives allow comedians like Jim Davidson and Bernard Manning to do their stage acts on TV. Yet Gervais can joke about 'spastics', say that gay men want to bugger your teenage sons and is even accorded the rare privilege of using the 'c' word unbleeped.

Oh, and did I mention that he's also not very funny?